Adventure stories; Life on other planets -- Fiction; Science fiction
He gave a harsh laugh. He had found his fuel. It only remained for him
to escape carrying a ton of heathen idol with him!
IV
Jupiter was crouching on the floor of his cage when the door to the
corridor opened softly behind him. He turned his head.
A girl, he saw, had slipped inside. She let the panel close behind her,
stared at him out of wide violet-blue eyes.
She was a slim fragile thing with pale yellow hair like winter
sunlight. A Caligan, a pink-skinned woman, he realized. The first he'd
seen.
She wore a shoulderless, clinging, single-piece garment of yellow fur.
Suddenly the garment moved, pulling itself higher up one shoulder,
settling snugly about her waist.
Moved of its own volition!
"It's alive!" Jupiter burst out. "What in Heaven's name is that thing?"
The girl wrinkled her forehead. "Of course, it's alive. It's a boj.
Have you never seen one?"
He shook his head.
She lifted the creature away from her skin, held it out to him through
the bars.
"Put it on."
Jupiter took it gingerly. It was light and flat with the warm limp feel
of a fresh pelt. The under side of the boj was hairless, the skin like
foam rubber. He could find neither eyes nor mouth.
The girl sensed what he was looking for, laughed infectiously.
"It hasn't any," she said; "it breathes and feeds through its skin. Put
it on."
Jupiter let it touch his body. At once the boj wrapped itself around
him. It was electrically alive, vibrant. He could feel a pleasant
tingle in his nerve ends and glanced at the Caligan girl in surprise.
She wore an amused expression and nothing else. There was an utter lack
of self consciousness about her. Jupiter found himself comparing her
soft, delicately rounded figure with Lete's lithe brown boyishness.
The Caligan girl suddenly held out her hand for the boj. He peeled it
off reluctantly, asking:
"Who are you?"
"Tabak," she replied. "Did you come to Yogol in a fiery chariot from
beyond the stars?"
He nodded.
Tabak's blue eyes widened. She drew close to the cage as if pulled by a
magnet, peered intently into his eyes.
"May--may I come into your mind?"
Jupiter's hard, bewhiskered face stiffened in surprise.
"Telepathy! Is that what you mean? Can you do that?"
"A little--if you help. We Caligans are closer to the Anolyn than the
other races. But we haven't much time before they come to examine
you. Won't you let your barriers down? The whole city is alive with
rumors...."
* * * * *
Jupiter had recoiled instinctively from having his innermost privacy
violated. He scowled in suspicion, asked: "Who sent you? What're you
after?"
"No one." She bit her lip. "There's a legend, a--a myth if you like,
about the 'Wanderer-from-Beyond', who is to drive the Anolyn back into
the sea."
He scratched his beard which had grown back since his captivity.
"How did you get in here?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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